Meta continuing to be the most shameless (and shameful to work for) company around.
I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place. Even their recent hardware foray is managing to find a way to ruin trust in everyday interactions (guys filming drunk girls with Ray Bans, surveillance, etc.).
Have several friends at the more 'thoughtful' frontier labs that bin meta applicants straight to the trash for this very reason.
They author thousands of open-source. Nobody would consider those 'products' (though feel free to play pedantic). And many would argue React did far more harm than good.
We would still have a framework of the week like we do today. There was a new framework weekly before React and there are frameworks of the week after React. React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen.
In 2015 I was teaching that React was a lightweight library that simply did function state -> html, codebases were bug-free, snappy and easy to understand. And it was true compared to configuring jQuery listeners the unperformant way into a Rube Goldberg machine of cause and effect.
As someone working daily with React, I agree. And I wouldn’t consider it a Facebook product at all. The amount of work they offload to the community is substantial.
We would end up with some other (probably worse) JS frameworks instead, JQuery(shudder) was still big, Angular 1 was a glimpse of something but they went for Angular 2+ that changed everything, backbone js, ember js,etc.
Vue is probably the only outsider of that age that stayed even somewhat relevant (really by just doing what Angular 1 did but correctly), Angular seems to have kinda survived in some niches but other than that I haven't heard of the other similarly aged frameworks in a long while.
React definitely didn't make frontend _great_ in a lot of cases, but jQuery, mootools, prototype, knockout, ember, angular, and a whole lot more JS frameworks that have come and gone predate React. If React hadn't been invented there'd be just as many poorly developed browser apps as there are today. You can't really pin that on React.
What I can pin on react is that it is very inefficient with resources using much more cpu power than needed to render some text and images on a webpage. Imagine all the electricity that was wasted because of react and the negative impact on the environment it has had because of that.
React doesn't do anything unless the DOM needs to to be updated.
Arguably React does have a 'disadvantage' in the sense that it doesn't do two-way data binding, and chooses to update as little of the DOM as necessary to render a change (which it's good at, and gets right), but that's sometimes more than just changing a text node or a value. I suspect that if React hadn't come along there'd be lots of homegrown frameworks doing something similar in a worse way. React is well thought-out and well designed.
Also, every reactive framework can have the same problem. It's not a React thing; it's a library-that-tracks-changes-and-updates-the-DOM thing. Used poorly you'll end up in a re-render loop.
We could just have static HTML pages and that would eliminate the whole problem, but then we'd be complaining about the electricity used on network roundtrips and people using badly coded desktop apps instead. Ultimately, libraries can be as bulletproof and fool-proof as you like, and developers will find new and novel ways to use them to build crap software. The responsibility (mostly) lies with the developers much more than the library.
Yea, no, not at all. A lot of websites that use “modern” front end frame works cause high CPU usage. Getting data as need using an event based system is magnitudes faster and more efficient.
Actually I can pin it on react directly. React was built by facebook to solve a single problem that most developers don’t have: their message count badge would be stale and out of date, their solution was to add global state, eliminate most of the browsers built in features, move away from multi page apps with http calls etc. so all kinds of things got harder like url routing, SEO, server side state management, etc.
But most apps don’t need a persistent counter that updates without browser refresh. Further, there were other easy solutions like http request polling, or even websockets. They weren’t solutions for Facebook because they had to support lots of devices that couldn’t handle something like websockets. But instead of the industry realizing this was a specific tool for a specific niche case we just piled on to the design pattern and built a massive lock in ecosystem that may the web worse.
I vastly prefer plain JS over React, but I will admit that React probably was instrumental in helping create frontend frameworks that are actually good, like Svelte. So I will give Facebook credit for that.
Svelte is awesome. Svelte 5's runes are especially powerful because they let reactivity escape the component boundary. The same reactive model works everywhere, whether you're updating the DOM or building plain application logic.
Rich Harris makes the point that React isn't actually reactive: "React doesn’t have any understanding of the values running through your app. It is not Reactive."
>Modern JavaScript frameworks are all about reactivity. Change your application's state, and the view updates automatically. But there's a catch — tracking state changes at runtime adds overhead that eats into your bundle size and performance budgets. In this talk, we'll discover an alternative approach: moving reactivity into the language itself. Your apps have never been smaller or faster than they're about to become.
He starts with spreadsheets as the archetypal reactive system.
Defines reactivity as values automatically updating according to dependency relationships.
Contrasts that with React's model of rerunning component functions and diffing virtual DOM trees.
Argues that React "doesn't understand the values flowing through your application" and therefore isn't reactive in the traditional sense.
I started with manual ajax calls and browser compatibility issues. It was a painful time. I remember jquery solved some real problems.
But I found the best development cycle as a rails/django multi page apps developer. Anytime I encountered something I needed to update without a refresh it was easy to solve with polling or eventually websockets.
Corporate open-source (Open Source) is done for free labor and PR, it shouldn't be bonus points for any company that does it, unless they commit to it and pay their contributors, have no CLAs that allow them to relicense the work, or adopt practices and licenses that are clearly more in line with the actual spirit of free software. Real free software that should be considered a public good is produced by people, for people.
There are sometimes well meaning people in corporations that do their best to at least get something out there and kudos to them, but corporations running Open Source projects should receive no goodwill for it, it's basically a scam.
Well yeah, you shouldn't give much credit to the corporation, but neither should you backlist all applicants who ever worked for them (as OP says some frontier labs do)
I'm not really commenting on that, I just want to remind people that Open Source is highly overrated and should not be looked at as a point in favor of a company.
While I agree with your point I don't agree that open source is overrated. This movement is one of the greatest developments in modern history, and the fact that corporations have exploited it for their own gain should in no way diminish its significance.
Open Source is the company takeover of the good that Free Software represents, I don't really see it as a "movement" by people. It's set up precisely to exploit the people for free labor and look good doing it.
Eric S. Raymond: "The people who knew Russ as a Quaker, a pacifist and a gentleman, and no racist, but nevertheless pressured OSI to do the responsible thing and fire him in order to avoid political damage should be equally ashamed. Abetting somebody elses witch hunt is no less disgusting than starting your own. Personally, I wanted to fight this on principle. Russ resigned the presidency rather than get OSI into that fight, and the board quite properly respected his wishes in the matter. That sacrifice makes me angrier at the fools and thugs who pulled him down."
>Guido is not racist like ESR is, and it would have been a disaster to have somebody as racist and obsessed with dragging the organizations he leads into the pro-racism side of political culture war battles that have absolutely nothing to do with their mission, as ESR has a track record of trying to do: He threw down the gauntlet and attempted to drag OSI into supporting Russ Nelson after his infamous "Blacks are Lazy" blog posting that caused him to resign for the good of OSI, who ESR wanted to spend their resources and reputation fighting his culture war against (dog whistle alert:) "thugs" who don't want to follow a racist leader. That kind of blatant racism and totally non-python-related racist culture warfare bullshit political battles would have been extremely detrimental to the python community, just as his other antics and his and Russel's racist rants were detrimental to the open source community. OSI has enough problems attracting women and minorities that they don't need white male leaders telling black people they're lazy and accusing people who disagree of being "fools and thugs".
Russ pulled his own "Blacks are Lazy" post down and resigned of his own free will and was not fired, so ESR was unwittingly calling Russ a fool and thug for pulling himself down, even though he was actually attacking anti-racist people, who didn't believe blacks are lazy, and thought racist white people who publically called all blacks lazy (then patronizingly lectured them on why they are justified to be lazy) didn't deserve to lead OSI.
Actually, Russ is a Quaker (or rather used to be until he renounced it for being too "socialist"). He created the first Quaker website in the world, quaker.org, in early 1995.
But his actual lifelong ideological religious cult is Libertarianism, obviously. And they epitomize what's wrong with the open source movement, ESR having based his career on tearing down and shitting all over everything RMS has done with Free Software.
ESR and Russ and their ilk just love playing a tired little game I call "Libertarian Chicken":
For many more examples, just look at the decades long consistent pattern of ESR's obnoxious inflamatory posts to the linux mailing lists, before he got kicked off for playing said games.
I've avoided react as much as I could. Maintained a high paying frontend career without react until a year or so ago, when I was forced by management to start using it. Thankfully AI was able to touch it for me while I pinched my nose.
What are these "thoughtful" frontier labs you speak of? I see Meta folks going to the big ones all the time. Ton of former PyTorch/Inductor folks now are at Ant/TM etc.
Everyone I know in the GPU compiler/GPGPU space seems to be either going to meta or leaving meta for NV or some AI lab. My anecdotal observations don't align with "bin meta applicants straight to the trash."
Yea I was going to ask the same question about "thoughtful frontier labs". Not sure that's really a thing unless we're talking about being thoughtful of accumulating wealth and power for a small handful of people.
I have to assume "thoughtful frontier labs" is either a pretty small lab, or a place holder for a lab that doesn't exist. So many of these anti-meta posts come off as based entirely in the feelings of opinionated techies rather than actual reality.
I disagree. Many Palantir FDEs work on morally benign or even positive projects, for example helping hospitals during COVID. (Of course, many also do unethical work).
At Meta, almost everyone is contributing to unethical ends.
Engineer building Panzers is better then SS medic. No doubt there.
It is in fact better to be employed arms manufacturer then be member of SS - regardless of which position they put you in. You knew this is fascist organization as you was entering it and that everything you will do is to advance those goals.
I don’t know if the distinction holds. The philosophical base of where you work goes is the same: fuelling the Nazi war machine. Building a machine that kills thousands isn’t that distinct from healing a soldier that kills dozens. Meh.
SS medic would be also personally actively working on genocide. SS were selected elite soldiers, volunteerly there, ideologically commited to the cause and willing to take hightened risks.
SS medic joined because he was commited nazi. You can be arms engineer without being commited nazi or commited toward genocide. With SS, nope, regardless of position they assigned you to, you have to be confident fundamentalist to join in the first place.
Right, you make a very valid point. I didn’t think of that. I assumed people were drafted to work for the SS like everywhere else in the ‘war machine’.
Even the original idea (if The Social Network is a trustworthy source) was copied -- Zuckerberg just has a complete lack of vision, but is clearly an intelligent operator with good business sense. Jagged intelligence, like an LLM.
We just had a thing that would export MSN messenger contact list, you'd add your email there and everyone would add you on MSN. Way less creepy than the stalking fb was doing.
has zuckerberg done anything productive of his own accord? facebook was ripped off. most meta companies were acquired. it could be argued that propagandizing the entire world was productive relative to vested interests but that was done on the behest of those interests, not zuck himself. the only thing im aware of zuck actually spearheading was the metaverse, a conclusively unproductive pursuit costing tens of billions to achieve literally nothing. it isnt objective to unilaterally behave with vitriol ... still this person seems more comparable to cancer itself than any actual human. i guess you could collapse productivity to 'making money' in which case clearly he is productive, im more referring to accomplishing anything useful for humanity. i also dont consider mass surveillance to be useful for humanity as bad actors will always get away with it whether they are on or off camera.
I don't think you can say that the idea was "copied". It was a very obvious idea. I had the same idea before I heard of the Facebook. Do you know why it's called the face book?
You may as well say Bezos copied the idea of Amazon from book shops.
Really, he was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
Except there is plenty of public evidence Facebook was. I think they were even on the cap table and thiel / palintir are explicitly partners in wiring up tech data pipelines into the knowledge graph. Thats why thiel was an early investor, this is known public info.
Thanks for that. I am confused about your prior comment. Maybe we are both cia and have forgotten because we were part of mk ultra and melted each other's memories
It was US only as you had to have a .edu email address to join, which most universities around the world did not get as it was mostly a US thing. It took forever for them to open up to non-US universities.
The hook that Facebook had over MySpace (and the million other "Social Network" platforms of that day) was that you couldn't embed shitty HTML intot he profile
I hope there’s a day where collectively the money is no longer enough and reason and good will prevails so that Meta can crumble to dust while I am alive; but doubtful that day will ever come.
Depends on what you consider theirs I guess. The pytorch ecosystem and initial push to open weight models, I consider a pretty good thing for the world all things considered. Lots of great code from FAIR.
Why did they discontinue that? It was a very good product; we got them for all the grandparents and they worked really well at bringing the family together across distance. Could have fit in so well with WhatsApp too. But then they just killed it.
Shareholders didn't like it. At the end of the day Meta is an advertising company so everything they do must be in service of increasing revenue from advertising.
Go look at Messenger on the App Store and look at the “data linked to you” section. An app with that much surveillance baked in is surely not improving the world.
Man I despise Facebook, no two ways about it. But one time our dog slipped her collar and escaped while we were out of state. We got back late in the evening after she had bolted. We were up all night searching for her and we posted to the Ft. Collins Lost & Found group. We got a few hits that night, and by the next morning there was so much participation that we could trace her movement through town with an accuracy rate of a few blocks. The latest picture was at the intersection of a side-road and the state highway as it left town, so I was down there, looking around and freaking out that she was street pizza, when she booped me on the back of the leg. Don't know how I missed her but I sure am glad she found me.
When social media works right it's an amazing thing. It's just too bad that we don't use 90% of it right. As an example I've never given back to that commons when I see a stray pet.
How so? Most of the hardcore encryption stuff was built at Facebook under the founder's supervision afaik for the purposes of making it harder for Zuck to inevitably ruin the privacy aspects.
I personally don't use it, because it _is_ loaded with engagement bait but its not all worse and is better in some ways.
From an infrastructure PoV, I seem to recall that WhatsApp was one of the few major companies that used Erlang, and were famous for being able to run the entirety of WhatsApp on only a few servers, each of which was serving millions of concurrent connections, mostly thanks to Erlang/BEAM (at least, from what I read). When it got acquired by Facebook, they then proceeded to rewrite the entirety of the backend in C++. Seems kind of baffling to me.
That last one’s going to need some substantiation.
“In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them.” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967)
No. It's a special arrangement between Google and WhatsApp which makes a file only visible to WhatsApp, and not appear in your regular drive so you can't do normal cloud file operations like generating public links.
Without evidence of this “special arrangement” I don’t see why anyone should believe you. You made a claim that is directly contrary to WhatsApp’s published materials and they have a lot to lose if you are correct. On the other hand, if your accusation is false, it’s tantamount to libel.
> You know how I found this link? Googling WhatsApp encryption backdoor. You could have too.
No need for the attitude. Op asked you for a source, which is customary for one to back up their initial claim; an onus on you and not for someone else to validate your claims.
Not yet they haven't. They've basically left it alone, with very minor UI/UX improvements.
They have very recently shown signs of making it worse (the AI button), but overall I've been surprised how careful they've been about doing it slowly. We've probably got another 5-10 years of it being great before they turn it to shit.
Yeah, I'll admit they've basically left it alone, but I'd chalk up the changes as minor UI/UX regressions that have ballooned the app size by an order of magnitude since it was acquired.
And the native Windows app was a post-Facebook introduction, but it was also Facebook that canned it in favour of the current web wrapper turd.
Binning applications for working at Meta seems hilarious and over the top. The ‘thoughtful’ labs are vacuuming up everyone’s chat logs and prompts to train the next model as well.
I’d really like to leave, but I’m kind of stuck, and I don’t have enough to retire.
I have to work remote from a non-coast state for family care reasons, and the places I’ve interviewed at the last few months have balked at hiring a remote employee.
You can’t say “where else can I work” like you have no agency over your life. Everyone chooses every day to do what they do that day.
You don’t get to be morally absolved because you’re choosing the easy path and you’re “stuck”. I’m sure there are plenty of places that pay less that would love to have talented remote employees.
The key point here is the “pay less” part. I know people that have turned down offers from meta that would 5x their salary and their personal situation would notably improve from at least some of that extra cash.
The OP is a bit preachy and maybe some employees really don’t have any other options even with accepting lower salaries, but the majority should at least realise the golden handcuffs their bound by even if they choose not to act on them.
This exactly. I value working from home and not working for a company that actively makes the world hell, so I make a quarter of what some of my peers at FAANG-adjacent companies make. Which is still a lot more than I realistically need.
Is there any place you look or way of looking that has you in that job? I'm currently happy with my ethical and remote job myself, but I question if it will be around in 10 years, and I especially hate job hunting.
I don't blame someone for working at facebook, but I don't think most of you realize how cash money a FANG company looks on your resume to IT managers at the lowly normal companies. Go work in financial services, insurance, retail, go be a contractor and work/travel until you find what you like.
But I also think all of the people criticizing Meta should post where they work. I'm sure plenty of people here work for ethically dubious companies, and make the same excuses.
In a large portion of tech people like to pretend that they are absolved of responsibility for their societal contributions. “Get that bag” and all that. Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc.
It makes sense that someone promoting them to re-evaluate the harm they’re causing by participating would elicit negative response
> Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc.
You don’t work at Anduril to make bread, at least not as a software engineer. It’s a long hours startup with worse pay than FAANG in high CoL areas. The people that work there fundamentally believe in “improving the defense of the west”.
It is the private sector equivalent of joining the military. If you want to bag on people in the military, go ahead. But they are not in the same category as people just doing things for convenient good money.
It’s okay, I put my thoughts out there and I appreciate the feedback from other engineers.
It’s actually kind of motivating. I’d interviewed at several places over the last few months and something out of my control always came up and halted the process (remote work closed down, hiring freeze, etc), so I’m definitely feeling a bit down about job prospects right now.
I needed some people to remind me “no, don’t be complacent, keep trying, there’s stuff out there and it’s worth the effort to continue looking”
People don’t particularly care for platitudes from anonymous people on the internet. Even less so when they reduce a complex dilemma in your life to a binary choice between an “easy and amoral” option and a “difficult but righteous” one.
Most people make compromises inside imperfect systems. The person casting judgment almost certainly has their own moral compromises too, except those they understand, contextualize, rationalize, and forgive themselves for.
It’s just tiresome. There may not be a ton of context, but even knowing that someone is bound to a particular place because of caregiving responsibilities should be enough to invite a little more empathy and grace, and a lot less judgment.
I agree. That said, a cursory glance at their post history shows they donate 6-figures to charity, which while very commendable, flies in the face of the idea of being 'stuck'.
In any case, it's quite simple. If you work at Meta, you certainly have other options. Similar-tier companies pay just as well, and lower-tier companies will interview you readily.
We're not talking about someone scraping by here - working at Meta is a choice, and takes hard work to get into. That does not absolve you from the damage the company has done to the world. If you work there, you contribute to it (no matter how small the capacity) and you benefit from it literally through wages and share ownership. Your vested interest is in the company growing. Historically, that has meant via very dark patterns.
> donate 6-figures to charity, which while very commendable, flies in the face of the idea of being 'stuck'.
Have you considered that the harm of the loss of 6 figures can completely destroy local charities?
This quickly devolves into effective altruism and the problems that come with that but it’s very easy to end up in a situation where you think the net good you bring by keeping a local abused women shelter open far outweighs the negative consequences for working at Meta.
I don't care to dive into imaginary philosophical debates. I'm responding to the person in this thread saying, "I'm stuck" while clearly being financially well-off.
I think there would be more empathy if Meta were the only company in the world where it was possible to work. That's "stuck." This is not.
I've quit jobs over ethical boundaries. It's not an easy decision, and "integrity" doesn't quite pay rent, but helped me to sleep better at night and let me live with myself.
You're making it very easy for them here. Giving up on any kind of personal integrity or responsibility in exchange for a lot of money is not a complex dilemma. You don't need context to see it's wrong. It's a classic deal with the devil, a literary trope as old as time.
They are not understanding that it's not one person's moral failing at the root of it, it's the system that forces everyone into participating in amoral things, including for example the investors of Meta who are getting a bigger bag. That includes every one of you S&P500 index fund hodlers.
It's both. We can point to individuals who make terrible decisions and also acknowledge that there will always be such people as long as the system incentivizes them.
How many of index fund investors take a short position on Meta to cancel out that share? That's pretty easy to do. If it's nobody then everyone is "such people" and it is meaningless to single out any one person. Just acknowledge that there is no moral high ground for anyone. You either provide labor or capital to the enterprise, which is worse?
No. It's not not doing everything, it's not doing even the easiest thing.
You don't get to hide behind "investing" just because there are some intermediaries to move money for you. You are actively gaining a profit from Meta and investing for the long term, meaning you don't even need the money for 10+ years. That's way worse than someone contributing labor to do some work in exchange for pay now. In fact you are paying their salary to do all these things you despise, and insist that they do more of it for more $ every quarter when there are any number of safe though less profitable alternatives. How does it feel?
Talk is cheap. Time to put your money where your mouth is.
Yes, it actually is, because your argument can be applied to every moral question. Why aren't you taking a short position in Meta when Meta is an evil company? Why are you drinking a coffee while a kid in Africa is starving? Why aren't you standing by the lake if a kid could be drowning?
People can't be expected to do literally every single thing that would make a positive impact. But they absolutely can be expected not to actively do evil.
> In fact you are paying their salary
I don't hold any investments in Meta, direct or indirect.
I'll make sure to shame my Illumina scientist neighbor for working on tech that deliberately targets underage children (purposely violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.). After all, he owns the world's most popular index fund, which includes Meta. He certainly should feel just as culpable as the Meta employees!
The Meta employee does as they are told. Your neighbor gives money to Zuck and asks him to tell the Meta employee what to do, sharing in profit with Zuck. Yes, he is worse. Way worse. Drug mule vs. drug financier type worse. He can also stop any time with a few clicks. What's stopping him?
Your argument erases the employee's biggest moral choice: did the Meta employee just spawn a Meta employee? No, they chose to work there. You assign maximal agency to someone buying an index fund and minimal agency to someone who voluntarily spends 40 hours a week advancing Meta's objectives. That's backwards. (Or, more likely, a purposeful troll comment).
Did the index fund just drop in someone's lap? No. They chose to place orders to turn cash into stocks that control Meta's objectives. Every argument you make about an employee you can make about an investor. The difference is, as I said, the chain of command goes one way, and history has something to say about the relative culpability of each end. You may want to reflect on that.
At the end of the day, how someone spends 40 hours a week is as much your business as how someone spends their money is my business. That you fail to see it is indicative of your own biases.
Wrong. It's someone who owns shares in some LLC that does contract killing and hired the hit man, and many others. You keep trying to skirt around the obvious, which looks very ridiculous.
The gall of one of the best-compensated people on the planet acting like they
had no place else to go. Well, Mister Ivory Tower, I've got news for you: Having a conscience doesn't come for free. You'll be fine with a lower pay that's still several multiples of what other people make.
You don't need to retire early, there are companies aplenty that accept remote workers. But you won't, because you sold yourself out for money.
I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place. Even their recent hardware foray is managing to find a way to ruin trust in everyday interactions (guys filming drunk girls with Ray Bans, surveillance, etc.).
Have several friends at the more 'thoughtful' frontier labs that bin meta applicants straight to the trash for this very reason.